Age: 65
male
Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh (born 10 December 1960) is a Northern Irish actor and filmmaker. Born in Belfast and raised primarily in Reading, Berkshire, Branagh trained at RADA in London and served as its president from 2015 to 2024. His accolades include an Academy Award, four BAFTAs, two Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Olivier Award. He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in 2012 and was given Freedom of the City in his native Belfast in 2018. In 2020, he was ranked in 20th place on The Irish Times's list of Ireland's greatest film actors. Branagh has directed and starred in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays, including Henry V (1989), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Othello (1995), Hamlet (1996), and As You Like It (2006). He was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Director for Henry V and Best Adapted Screenplay for Hamlet. He directed Swan Song (1992), which earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. He also directed Peter's Friends (1992), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994), Thor (2011), and Cinderella (2015). For his semi-autobiographical film Belfast (2021), he was nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Director and won Best Original Screenplay. Branagh directed and starred as Hercule Poirot in the Hercule Poirot film series (2017–present). He has also acted in Celebrity (1998), Wild Wild West (1999), The Road to El Dorado (2000), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), and Valkyrie (2008). His portrayal of Laurence Olivier in My Week with Marilyn (2011) earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He played supporting roles in Christopher Nolan's films Dunkirk (2017), Tenet (2020), and Oppenheimer (2023). Branagh has starred in the BBC1 series Fortunes of War (1987), the Channel 4 series Shackleton (2002), the television film Warm Springs (2005), and the BBC One series Wallander (2008–2016). He received a Primetime Emmy Award and an International Emmy Award for Best Actor for portraying SS leader Reinhard Heydrich in the HBO film Conspiracy (2001).
Kenneth Branagh
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for M in Ian Fleming's James Bond 007 (Reboot/Bond 26)
Suggested by joshthomas
A stand-alone movie that is meant to be a complete continuity reset for a new era of James Bond movies. It will not be connected to any previous movies. A hard reboot. The adventures of James Bond have already begun and he will already have his 00-license and have experience as MI6's top agent. Future movies will be either re-imaginings of older movies under a new titles in a modern setting or it will be completely new adventures to draw on the Fleming novels and past films or adapt them in a fresh way. There will be more humor this time. Things will not be so serious and dark but there will still be all the violence, sex, romance and political intrigue any 007 fan can ask for. This particular run is meant to be straightforward stand-alone missions for Bond dealing with villains bent on either global Armageddon or world domination, same old dream. Iconic characters will make cameos and/or be heavily involved in the series, which will loosely tie the adventures together. Example: Alec Trevelyan is very close to Bond and may help him heavily here but will be "killed off" in the end only to return as the villain in a later film.
